Celebrating Flag Day with the Democrats

FRANKLY SPEAKING...

ABOUT FRANKFrank Mickadeit was born in Palo Alto on the last day of the winter that Buddy Holly died, grew up in Lompoc the oldest of seven children and went to college at San Diego State.

He got his first journalism job at age 16 as a part-time sportswriter at the Lompoc Record, working for Scott Ostler, who would later become a sports columnist at the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle.

After college, he worked at newspapers in San Diego County for five years before joining the Register staff in 1987. At the Register, he was a reporter from 1987-1992, and an editor supervising coverage of local, state and political news from 1992 to 2004. He began his daily column in August of 2004.

He lives in south county with his wife -- a PR type -- and their two terriers, Angie (a Scottie) and Clancy (a wire fox). His daughter is in law school.

I hit the Democrats' Flag Day picnic at Lake Park in Huntington Beach on Saturday, in part because I caught hell from them last year for only attending the GOP's Flag Day dinner and in part because I was under the impression George Clooney was going to show.

As co-organizer George Giacoppe clarified after I'd waited two hours to hear Clooney's wisdom, the actor was only invited. He must have had other plans. Oh.

Not that there weren't local celebrities: Loretta Sanchez, in blue jeans and a windbreaker bearing a union logo, promising NancyPelosi would be the next speaker of the House; Lou Correa, who told me that today he's going to be clarifying with "the sheriff's" lawyer, Martin Mayer, just who it is who pays his legal fees; and Rose Espinoza, whom I gave every opportunity to get self-righteous and say she didn't go negative on a hugely vulnerable Chris Norby during the supervisorial election because she had integrity, but who confessed it was in large part because of what she didn't have - money. I guess that itself is a form of integrity.

I'd estimate 80 or 90 people gathered, a diverse assemblage the Republicans will have a hard time matching at their 1,000-person Flag Day dinner Tuesday. Giacoppe in his U.S. Army officer's dress uniform. An imam in his kufi. A Franciscan priest in his brown robes. Folks in their 90s. Kids in their strollers.

Hot dogs, apple pie, U.S. flags (and lots of speeches about the flag) and Huntington Beach City Councilwoman Jill Hardy leading everyone in "God Bless America," including the first verse, which I'll bet even Scott Baugh doesn't know. Oh, there was some Bush-bashing, some Rohrabacher bashing, a little pro-life bashing, and the other stuff you'd expect, but there were also patriotism, family and, I almost forgot, mariachis.

I button-holed Correa first, to figure out how strongly he feels about Carona using Mayer to advise him on how to discipline Bill Hunt. There'd been no mention of that when Carona asked the Board of Supervisors for $100K to hire Mayer.

Correa summed it up nicely with: "What is going on?"

As a legal matter, Correa believes, the supervisors can't tell Carona how to handle his troops. However, Correa thinks Mayer does fall under control of the supes or people who work for them. Supervisors Bill Campbell and Norby are also meeting with Mayer individually.

It seems to me, I told Correa, if the supervisors decide they want to take a unified position on giving Mayer direction (or the old heave-ho), that would require a publicly agendized meeting under the Brown Act. Even though they'd obviously use the potential-litigation exemption to meet in private, at least we'd know they were meeting. And when to start looking for the leaks.

(By the way, if San Clemente really wanted to play hardball to get Hunt back, it would ask itself the question every would-be player should ask: What would Schroeder do? WWSD in this case? I think he'd threaten to go to Laguna Beach or Oceanside for police services.)

Next, I cornered Espinoza, trying to figure out why in that supervisorial race the underdog had an explosive issue - the sexual harassment suit - and yet did nothing with it. (The female employee won her claim but was awarded no money, after which both sides declared victory.)

Part of it, Espinoza said, was she doesn't like going negative. "We never send out hit pieces against each other," she said of La Habra council races.

However... "We read the (trial) transcripts," she says, "and if there are character issues, people should know. (But) we only had about $50,000. ... You would have to constantly hit him (with mail). So, should I tell people what I've done or spend money to try to bring him down?"

As we know, DeYoung forced Pat Bates into a runoff, while Espinoza got just 27 percent of the vote to Norby's 73 percent.

Given the wedge issue DeYoung manufactured with her $2.8 million, it boggles the mind to think what she'd have done with what Espinoza had.

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